Tool Bassist Justin Chancellor Dresses Up as a Strange Character to Surprise Opening Band

California metalcore-meets-lots-of-other-stuff band Night Verses just finished supporting Tool on their current tour and, according to Lambgoat, that’s thanks to Tool bassist Justin Chancellor. Apparently the members of Tool take turns picking their opening acts, and Night Verses were Chancellor’s pick, which makes sense as Chancellor played bass on one of the tracks on Night Verses’ latest album.

In a video posted to Tool’s Instagram account, Chancellor was seen on Night Verses’ final night of the tour giving the opening act a bit of a surprise during their set. Chancellor dressed up in a creepy-looking Willy Wonka costume, got several road crew members to put on masks of various types of animals, and they all went on stage during Night Verses’ set to surprise them.

While I appreciate the nod to Willy Wonka, the fact that Chancellor had a bunch of road crew members follow him in animal masks makes me think that Chancellor doesn’t actually know who Willy Wonka is. It’s not called Willy Wonka and the Zoo. There’s no part in the various movies or books about Willy Wonka where he leads around an army of penguins and aardvarks like some sort of weird pied piper. If you want to do Willy Wonka, he should be followed around by a bunch of short, orange people.

Then again, it is a generic costume, so it’s possible that Chancellor wasn’t going for Willy Wonka, but then what was he supposed to be, exactly? Just some random guy in a top hat that leads around random animals? I’m starting to wonder if maybe I’ve put more thought into this than Chancellor did.